Given a finite set P ⊂ ℝ², the directed Theta-6 graph, denoted Θ₆(P), is a well-studied geometric graph due to its close relationship with the Delaunay triangulation. The Θ₆(P)-graph is defined as follows: the plane around each point u ∈ P is partitioned into 6 equiangular cones with apex u, and in each cone, u is joined to the point whose projection on the bisector of the cone is closest. Equivalently, the Θ₆(P)-graph contains an edge from u to v exactly when the interior of ∇_u^v is disjoint from P, where ∇_u^v is the unique equilateral triangle containing u on a corner, v on the opposite side, and whose sides are parallel to the cone boundaries. It was previously shown that the spanning ratio of the Θ₆(P)-graph is between 4 and 7 in the worst case (Akitaya, Biniaz, and Bose Comput. Geom., 105-106:101881, 2022). We close this gap by showing a tight spanning ratio of 5. This is the first tight bound proven for the spanning ratio of any Θ_k(P)-graph. Our lower bound models a long path by mapping it to a converging series. Our upper bound proof uses techniques novel to the area of spanners. We use linear programming to prove that among several candidate paths, there exists a path satisfying our bound.

A dominating set of a graph G is connected if it induces a connected graph in G. For planar triangulations, it has been known since 1990 that every n-vertex triangulation admits a connected dominating set of size at most n/2 - 1, and no improvement to this bound was known for over three decades. We break this longstanding barrier by showing that every n-vertex triangulation has a connected dominating set of size at most 10n/21. Equivalently, every triangulation admits a spanning tree with at least 11n/21 leaves. Moreover, we present an algorithm that computes such a set in optimal linear time. Our result narrows the gap to the best known lower bound and has graph drawing applications, establishing a bound for one-bend free sets and improving the known bound for simultaneous planar embeddings.

A covering path for a finite set P of points in the plane is a polygonal path such that every point of P lies on a segment of the path. The vertices of the path need not be at points of P. A covering path is plane if its segments do not cross each other. Let π(n) be the minimum number such that every set of n points in the plane admits a plane covering path with at most π(n) segments. We prove that π(n) ≤ ⌈6n/7⌉. This improves the previous best-known upper bound of ⌈21n/22⌉, due to Biniaz (SoCG 2023). Our proof is constructive and yields a simple O(n log n)-time algorithm for computing a plane covering path.

Let S be a set of n points in the plane. We present four different algorithms for finding a pair of points in S such that any disk that contains that pair must contain at least cn points of S , for some constant c > 0. The first is a randomized algorithm that finds a pair in O(n log n) expected time for points in general position and c = 1/2 − 1/√6 ≈ 1/10.9. The second algorithm, also for points in general position, takes O(n 2 ) time but the constant c is improved to 1/2 − 1/√12 ≈ 1/4.7. Using this algorithm and applying binary search, we find the pair that achieves the optimal c in O(n 2 log n ) time. The final algorithm finds in linear time a pair of points such that any disk through them contains at least n/3 of the points of S when S is in convex position. We also adapt these algorithms to find a pair of points of S in a polygon P such that any geodesic disk that contains that pair must contain at least cn points of S for some constant c > 0.

Cops and Robbers is a game played on a graph where a set of cops attempt to capture a single robber. The game proceeds in rounds, where each round first consists of the cops' turn, followed by the robber’s turn. In the first round, the cops place themselves on a subset of vertices, after which the robber chooses a vertex to place himself. From the next round onwards, in the cops' turn, every cop can choose to either stay on the same vertex or move to an adjacent vertex, and likewise the robber in his turn. The robber is considered to be captured if, at any point in time, there is some cop on the same vertex as the robber. The cops win if they can capture the robber within a finite number of rounds; else the robber wins. A natural question in this game concerns the cop-number of a graph - the minimum number of cops needed to capture a robber. It has long been known that graphs embeddable (without crossings) on surfaces of bounded genus have bounded cop-number. In contrast, it was shown recently that the class of 1-planar graphs - graphs that can be drawn on the plane with at most one crossing per edge - does not have bounded cop-number. This paper initiates an investigation into how the distance between crossing pairs of edges influences a graph’s cop number. In particular, we look at Distance d Cops and Robbers, a variant of the classical game, where the robber is considered to be captured if there is a cop within distance d of the robber. Let c_d(G) denote the minimum number of cops required in the graph G to capture a robber within distance d. We look at various classes of graphs, such as 1-plane graphs, k-plane graphs (graphs where each edge is crossed at most k times), and even general graph drawings, and show that if every crossing pair of edges can be connected by a path of small length, then c_d(G) is bounded, for small values of d. For example, we show that if a graph G admits a drawing in which every pair of crossing edges is contained in a path of length at most 3, then c₄(G) ≤ 21. And if the drawing permits a stronger assumption that the endpoints of every crossing induce the complete graph K₄, then c₃(G) ≤ 9. The tools and techniques that we develop in this paper are sufficiently general, enabling us to examine graphs drawn not only on the sphere but also on orientable and non-orientable surfaces.

Let S be a set of n points in ℝ^d, where d ≥ 2 is a constant, and let H₁,H₂,…,H_{m+1} be a sequence of vertical hyperplanes that are sorted by their first coordinates, such that exactly n/m points of S are between any two successive hyperplanes. Let |A(S,m)| be the number of different closest pairs in the {(m+1) choose 2} vertical slabs that are bounded by H_i and H_j, over all 1 ≤ i < j ≤ m+1. We prove tight bounds for the largest possible value of |A(S,m)|, over all point sets of size n, and for all values of 1 ≤ m ≤ n. As a result of these bounds, we obtain, for any constant ε > 0, a data structure of size O(n), such that for any vertical query slab Q, the closest pair in the set Q ∩ S can be reported in O(n^{1/2+ε}) time. Prior to this work, no linear space data structure with sublinear query time was known.

Cops and Robbers is a type of pursuit-evasion game played on a graph where a set of cops try to capture a single robber. The cops first choose their initial vertex positions, and later the robber chooses a vertex. The cops and robbers make their moves in alternate turns: in the cops' turn, every cop can either choose to move to an adjacent vertex or stay on the same vertex, and likewise the robber in his turn. If the cops can capture the robber in a finite number of rounds, the cops win, otherwise the robber wins. The cop-number of a graph is the minimum number of cops required to catch a robber in the graph. It has long been known that graphs embedded on surfaces (such as planar graphs and toroidal graphs) have a small cop-number. Recently, Durocher et al. [Graph Drawing, 2023] investigated the problem of cop-number for the class of 1-planar graphs, which are graphs that can be embedded in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once. They showed that unlike planar graphs which require just three cops, 1-planar graphs have an unbounded cop-number. On the positive side, they showed that maximal 1-planar graphs require only three cops by crucially using the fact that the endpoints of every crossing in an embedded maximal 1-planar graph induce a K 4 . In this paper, we show that the cop-number remains bounded even under the relaxed condition that the endpoints induce at least three edges. More precisely, let an ×-crossing of an embedded 1-planar graph be a crossing whose endpoints induce a matching; i.e., there is no edge connecting the endpoints apart from the crossing edges themselves. We show that any 1-planar graph that can be embedded without ×-crossings has cop-number at most 21. Moreover, any 1-planar graph that can be embedded with at most γ ×-crossings has cop-number at most γ + 21 .

The problem of computing vertex and edge connectivity of a graph are classical problems in algorithmic graph theory. The focus of this paper is on computing these parameters for graphs drawn on the plane. A typical example of such graphs are planar graphs which can be embedded without any crossings. It has long been known that vertex and edge connectivity of planar embedded graphs can be computed in linear time. Very recently, Biedl and Murali extended the techniques from planar graphs to 1-plane graphs without ×-crossings, i.e., crossings whose endpoints induce a matching. While the tools used were novel, they were highly tailored to 1-plane graphs, and do not provide much leeway for further extension. In this paper, we develop alternate techniques that are simpler, have wider applications to near-planar graphs, and can be used to test both vertex and edge connectivity. Our technique works for all those embedded graphs where any pair of crossing edges are connected by a path that, roughly speaking, can be covered with few cells of the drawing. Important examples of such graphs include optimal 2-planar and optimal 3-planar graphs, d-map graphs, d-framed graphs, graphs with bounded crossing number, and k-plane graphs with bounded number of ×-crossings.

In this article, we present a construction of a spanner on a set of n points in Rd that we call a heavy path WSPD spanner. The construction is parameterized by a constant s>2 called the separation ratio. The size of the graph is O(sdn) and the spanning ratio is at most 1+2/s+2/(s−1). We also show that this graph has a hop spanning ratio of at most 2lg⁡n+1. We present a memoryless local routing algorithm for heavy path WSPD spanners. The routing algorithm requires a vertex v of the graph to store O(deg⁡(v)log⁡n) bits of information, where deg⁡(v) is the degree of v. The routing ratio is at most 1+4/s+1/(s−1) and at least 1+4/s in the worst case. The number of edges on the routing path is bounded by 2lg⁡n+1. We then show that the heavy path WSPD spanner can be constructed in metric spaces of bounded doubling dimension. These metric spaces have been studied in computational geometry as a generalization of Euclidean space. We show that, in a metric space with doubling dimension λ, the heavy path WSPD spanner has size O(sλn) where s is the separation ratio. The spanning ratio and hop spanning ratio are the same as in the Euclidean case. Finally, we show that the local routing algorithm works in the bounded doubling dimension case. The vertices require the same amount of storage, but the routing ratio becomes at most 1+(2+ττ−1)/s+1/(s−1) in the worst case, where τ≥11 is a constant related to the doubling dimension.

Let T be a tessellation composed of equilateral triangular regions, where each region has an associated positive weight. We present two methods that discretize the space based on the placement of Steiner points in the cells of T. Using such a discretization, we can use Dijkstra's algorithm for computing the shortest path in the geometric graph obtained. This will lead us to two approximation algorithms for solving the Weighted Region Problem. For a given parameter ε∈(0,1], the first discretization scheme provides an approximate path that is (1+0.428ε) times better than the approximation given by Aleksandrov et al. [Determining approximate shortest paths on weighted polyhedral surfaces. Journal of the ACM, 52(1):25-53, 2005]. The other discretization scheme uses at least (ε+2ε+4ε+4)log2⁡e fewer points per segment of the triangulation with the same approximation factor.

We study the quality of weighted shortest paths when a continuous 2-dimensional space is discretized by a weighted triangular tessellation. In order to evaluate how well the tessellation approximates the 2-dimensional space, we study three types of shortest paths: a weighted shortest path SPw(s,t), which is a shortest path from s to t in the space; a weighted shortest vertex path SVPw(s,t), which is an any-angle shortest path; and a weighted shortest grid path SGPw(s,t), which is a shortest path whose edges are edges of the tessellation. Given any arbitrary weight assignment to the faces of a triangular tessellation, thus extending recent results by Bailey et al. (2021) [6], we prove upper and lower bounds on the ratios ‖SGPw(s,t)‖‖SPw(s,t)‖, ‖SVPw(s,t)‖‖SPw(s,t)‖, ‖SGPw(s,t)‖‖SVPw(s,t)‖, which provide estimates on the quality of the approximation. It turns out, surprisingly, that our worst-case bounds are independent of any weight assignment. Our main result is that ‖SGPw(s,t)‖‖SPw(s,t)‖=23≈1.15 in the worst case, and this is tight. As a corollary, for the weighted any-angle path SVPw(s,t) we obtain the approximation result ‖SVPw(s,t)‖‖SPw(s,t)‖⪅1.15.

We consider the design of adaptive data structures for searching elements of a tree-structured space. We use a natural generalization of the rotation-based online binary search tree model in which the underlying search space is the set of vertices of a tree. This model is based on a simple structure for decomposing graphs, previously known under several names including elimination trees, vertex rankings, and tubings. The model is equivalent to the classical binary search tree model exactly when the underlying tree is a path. We describe an online O (log log n )-competitive search tree data structure in this model, where n is the number of vertices. This matches the best-known competitive ratio of binary search trees. Our method is inspired by Tango trees, an online binary search tree algorithm, but critically needs several new notions including one that we call Steiner-closed search trees, which may be of independent interest. Moreover, our technique is based on a novel use of two levels of decomposition, first from search space to a set of Steiner-closed trees and, second, from these trees into paths.

We study zombies and survivor, a variant of the game of cops and robber on graphs. In this variant, the single survivor plays the role of the robber and attempts to escape from the zombies that play the role of the cops. The zombies are restricted, on their turn, to always follow an edge of a shortest path towards the survivor. Let $z(G)$ be the smallest number of zombies required to catch the survivor on a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices. We show that there exist outerplanar graphs and visibility graphs of simple polygons such that $z(G) = Θ(n)$. We also show that there exist maximum-degree-$3$ outerplanar graphs such that $z(G) = Ω\left(n/\log(n)\right)$. Let $z_L(G)$ be the smallest number of lazy zombies (zombies that can stay still on their turn) required to catch the survivor on a graph $G$. We establish that lazy zombies are more powerful than normal zombies but less powerful than cops. We prove that $z_L(G) = 2$ for connected outerplanar graphs. We show that $z_L(G)\leq k$ for connected graphs with treedepth $k$. This result implies that $z_L(G)$ is at most $(k+1)\log n$ for connected graphs with treewidth $k$, $O(\sqrt{n})$ for connected planar graphs, $O(\sqrt{gn})$ for connected graphs with genus $g$ and $O(h\sqrt{hn})$ for connected graphs with any excluded $h$-vertex minor. Our results on lazy zombies still hold when an adversary chooses the initial positions of the zombies.

The fragile complexity of a comparison-based algorithm is $f(n)$ if each input element participates in $O(f(n))$ comparisons. In this paper, we explore the fragile complexity of algorithms adaptive to various restrictions on the input, i.e., algorithms with a fragile complexity parameterized by a quantity other than the input size~$n$. We show that searching for the predecessor in a sorted array has fragile complexity $\Theta(\log k)$, where $k$ is the rank of the query element, both in a randomized and a deterministic setting. For predecessor searches, we also show how to optimally reduce the amortized fragile complexity of the elements in the array. We also prove the following results: Selecting the $k$th smallest element has expected fragile complexity $O(\log\log k)$ for the element selected. Deterministically finding the minimum element has fragile complexity $\Theta(\log(\INV))$ and $\Theta(\log(\RUNS))$, where $\INV$ is the number of inversions in a sequence and $\RUNS$ is the number of increasing runs in a sequence. Deterministically finding the median has fragile complexity $O(\log(\RUNS) + \log\log n)$ and $\Theta(\log (\INV))$. Deterministic sorting has fragile complexity $\Theta(\log (\INV))$ but it has fragile complexity $\Theta(\log n)$ regardless of the number of runs.

A 2-interval is the union of two disjoint intervals on the real line. Two 2-intervals D1 and D2 are disjoint if their intersection is empty (i.e., no interval of D1 intersects any interval of D2). There can be three different relations between two disjoint 2-intervals; namely, preceding (<), nested (⊏) and crossing (≬). Two 2-intervals D1 and D2 are called R-comparable for some R∈{<,⊏,≬}, if either D1RD2 or D2RD1. A set D of disjoint 2-intervals is R-comparable, for some R⊆{<,⊏,≬} and R≠∅, if every pair of 2-intervals in D are R-comparable for some R∈R. Given a set of 2-intervals and some R⊆{<,⊏,≬}, the objective of the 2-interval pattern problem is to find a largest subset of 2-intervals that is R-comparable. The 2-interval pattern problem is known to be W[1]-hard when |R|=3 and NP-hard when |R|=2 (except for R={<,⊏}, which is solvable in quadratic time). In this paper, we fully settle the parameterized complexity of the problem by showing that it is W[1]-hard for both R={⊏,≬} and R={<,≬} (when parameterized by the size of an optimal solution). This answers the open question posed by Vialette ((2008) [22]).

A weighted geometric graph G is a graph whose n vertices are points in the plane and whose m edges are line segments weighted by the Euclidean distance between their endpoints. A t-spanner of G is a connected spanning subgraph G' with the property that for every pair of vertices x, y, the shortest path from x to y in G' has weight at most t ≥ 1 times the shortest path from x to y in G. The parameter t is commonly referred to as the spanning ratio or the stretch factor. Typically, G is a graph with Ω(n²) edges. As such, the goal in this area is to construct a subgraph G' that possesses several desirable properties such as O(n) edges and spanning ratio close to 1. In addition, when planarity is one of the desired properties, variants of Delaunay graphs play a vital role in the construction of planar geometric spanners. In this talk, we will provide a comprehensive overview of various results concerning the spanning ratio, among other several other properties, of different types of Delaunay graphs and their subgraphs.

We consider the design of adaptive data structures for searching elements of a tree-structured space. We use a natural generalization of the rotation-based online binary search tree model in which the underlying search space is the set of vertices of a tree. This model is based on a simple structure for decomposing graphs, previously known under several names including elimination trees, vertex rankings, and tubings. The model is equivalent to the classical binary search tree model exactly when the underlying tree is a path. We describe an online O(log log n)-competitive search tree data structure in this model, matching the best known competitive ratio of binary search trees. Our method is inspired by Tango trees, an online binary search tree algorithm, but critically needs several new notions including one which we call Steiner-closed search trees, which may be of independent interest. Moreover our technique is based on a novel use of two levels of decomposition, first from search space to a set of Steiner-closed trees, and secondly from these trees into paths.

We present a routing algorithm for the Θ4-graph that computes a path between any two vertices s and t having length at most 17 times the Euclidean distance between s and t. To compute this path, at each step, the algorithm only uses knowledge of the location of the current vertex, its (at most four) outgoing edges, the destination vertex, and one additional bit of information in order to determine the next edge to follow. This provides the first known online, local, competitive routing algorithm with constant routing ratio for the Θ4-graph, as well as improving the best known upper bound on the spanning ratio of these graphs from 237 to 17. We also show that without this additional bit of information, the routing ratio increases to ≈ 17.03.

A geometric graph G=(P,E) is a set of points in the plane and edges between pairs of points, where the weight of an edge is equal to the Euclidean distance between its two endpoints. In local routing we find a path through G from a source vertex s to a destination vertex t, using only knowledge of the current vertex, its incident edges, and the locations of s and t. We present an algorithm for local routing on the Delaunay triangulation, and show that it finds a path between a source vertex s and a target vertex t that is not longer than 3.56|st|, improving the previous bound of 5.9|st|.

An obstacle representation of a graph is a mapping of the vertices onto points in the plane and a set of connected regions of the plane (called obstacles) such that the straight-line segment connecting the points corresponding to two vertices does not intersect any obstacles if and only if the vertices are adjacent in the graph. The obstacle representation and its plane variant (in which the resulting representation is a plane straight-line embedding of the graph) have been extensively studied with the main objective of minimizing the number of obstacles. Recently, Biedl and Mehrabi [Therese C. Biedl and Saeed Mehrabi, 2017] studied non-blocking grid obstacle representations of graphs in which the vertices of the graph are mapped onto points in the plane while the straight-line segments representing the adjacency between the vertices is replaced by the L_1 (Manhattan) shortest paths in the plane that avoid obstacles. In this paper, we introduce the notion of geodesic obstacle representations of graphs with the main goal of providing a generalized model, which comes naturally when viewing line segments as shortest paths in the Euclidean plane. To this end, we extend the definition of obstacle representation by allowing some obstacles-avoiding shortest path between the corresponding points in the underlying metric space whenever the vertices are adjacent in the graph. We consider both general and plane variants of geodesic obstacle representations (in a similar sense to obstacle representations) under any polyhedral distance function in R^d as well as shortest path distances in graphs. Our results generalize and unify the notions of obstacle representations, plane obstacle representations and grid obstacle representations, leading to a number of questions on such representations.

We study self-approaching paths that are contained in a simple polygon. A self-approaching path is a directed curve connecting two points such that the Euclidean distance between a point moving along the path and any future position does not increase, that is, for all points a, b, and c that appear in that order along the curve, |ac| >= |bc|. We analyze the properties, and present a characterization of shortest self-approaching paths. In particular, we show that a shortest self-approaching path connecting two points inside a polygon can be forced to follow a general class of non-algebraic curves. While this makes it difficult to design an exact algorithm, we show how to find a self-approaching path inside a polygon connecting two points under a model of computation which assumes that we can calculate involute curves of high order. Lastly, we provide an algorithm to test if a given simple polygon is self-approaching, that is, if there exists a self-approaching path for any two points inside the polygon.

Let S be a finite set of points in the plane that are in convex position. We present an algorithm that constructs a plane frac{3+4 pi}{3}-spanner of S whose vertex degree is at most 3. Let Lambda be the vertex set of a finite non-uniform rectangular lattice in the plane. We present an algorithm that constructs a plane 3 sqrt{2}-spanner for Lambda whose vertex degree is at most 3. For points that are in the plane and in general position, we show how to compute plane degree-3 spanners with a linear number of Steiner points.

Let P be a closed simple polygon with n vertices. For any two points in P, the geodesic distance between them is the length of the shortest path that connects them among all paths contained in P. The geodesic center of P is the unique point in P that minimizes the largest geodesic distance to all other points of P. In 1989, Pollack, Sharir and Rote [Disc. & Comput. Geom. 89] showed an O(n log n)-time algorithm that computes the geodesic center of P. Since then, a longstanding question has been whether this running time can be improved (explicitly posed by Mitchell [Handbook of Computational Geometry, 2000]). In this paper we affirmatively answer this question and present a linear time algorithm to solve this problem.

We present a deterministic local routing algorithm that is guaranteed to find a path between any pair of vertices in a half-$\theta_6$-graph (the half-$\theta_6$-graph is equivalent to the Delaunay triangulation where the empty region is an equilateral triangle). The length of the path is at most $5/\sqrt{3} \approx 2.887$ times the Euclidean distance between the pair of vertices. Moreover, we show that no local routing algorithm can achieve a better routing ratio, thereby proving that our routing algorithm is optimal. This is somewhat surprising because the spanning ratio of the half-$\theta_6$-graph is 2, meaning that even though there always exists a path whose length is at most twice the Euclidean distance, we cannot always find such a path when routing locally. Since every triangulation can be embedded in the plane as a half-$\theta_6$-graph using $O(\log n)$ bits per vertex coordinate via Schnyder's embedding scheme [W. Schnyder, Embedding planar graphs on the grid, in Proceedings of the 1st Annual ACM--SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 1990), ACM, New York, SIAM, Philadelphia, 1990, pp. 138--148], our result provides a competitive local routing algorithm for every such embedded triangulation. Finally, we show how our routing algorithm can be adapted to provide a routing ratio of $15/\sqrt{3} \approx 8.660$ on two bounded degree subgraphs of the half-$\theta_6$-graph.

For the design of mass-produced wearable objects for a population it is important to find a small number of sizes, called a sizing system, that will fit well on a wide range of individuals in the population. To obtain a sizing system that incorporates the shape of an identity along with its motion, we introduce a general framework to generate a sizing system for dynamic 3D motion data. Based on a registered 3D motion database a sizing system is computed for task-specific anthropometric measurements and tolerances, specified by designers. We generate the sizing system by transforming the problem into a box stabbing problem, which aims to find the lowest number of points stabbing a set of boxes. We use a standard computational geometry technique to solve this, it recursively computes the stabbing of lower-dimensional boxes. We apply our framework to a database of facial motion data for anthropometric measurements related to the design of face masks. We show the generalization capabilities of this sizing system on unseen data, and compute, for each size, a representative 3D shape that can be used by designers to produce a prototype model.

For a set of points in the plane and a fixed integer k > 0, the Yao graph Yk partitions the space around each point into k equiangular cones of angle θ = 2π/k, and connects each point to a nearest neighbor in each cone. It is known for all Yao graphs, with the sole exception of Y5, whether or not they are geometric spanners. In this paper we close this gap by showing that for odd k ≥ 5, the spanning ratio of Yk is at most 1/(1−2sin(3θ/8)), which gives the first constant upper bound for Y5, and is an improvement over the previous bound of 1/(1−2sin(θ/2)) for odd k ≥ 7. We further reduce the upper bound on the spanning ratio for Y5 from 10.9 to 2 + √3 ≈ 3.74, which falls slightly below the lower bound of 3.79 established for the spanning ratio of ⊝5 (⊝-graphs differ from Yao graphs only in the way they select the closest neighbor in each cone). This is the first such separation between a Yao and ⊝-graph with the same number of cones. We also give a lower bound of 2.87 on the spanning ratio of Y5. Finally, we revisit the Y6 graph, which plays a particularly important role as the transition between the graphs (k > 6) for which simple inductive proofs are known, and the graphs (k ≤ 6) whose best spanning ratios have been established by complex arguments. Here we reduce the known spanning ratio of Y6 from 17.6 to 5.8, getting closer to the spanning ratio of 2 established for ⊝6.

Highly connected and yet sparse graphs (such as expanders or graphs of high treewidth) are fundamental, widely a pplicable and extensively studied combinatorial objects. We initiate the study of such highly connected graphs that are, in addition, geometric spanners. We define a property of spanners called robustness. Informally, when one removes a few vertices from a robust spanner, this harms only a small number of other vertices. We show that robust spanners must have a superlinear number of edges, even in one dimension. On the positive side, we give constructions, for any dimension, of robust spanners with a near-linear number of edges.

Highly connected and yet sparse graphs (such as expanders or graphs of high treewidth) are fundamental, widely applicable, and extensively studied combinatorial objects. We initiate the study of such highly connected graphs that are, in addition, geometric spanners. We define a property of spanners called robustness. Informally, when one removes a few vertices from a robust spanner, this harms only a small number of other vertices. We show that robust spanners must have a superlinear number of edges, even in one dimension. On the positive side, we give constructions, for any dimension, of robust spanners with a near-linear number of edges.

We present a deterministic local routing scheme that is guaranteed to find a path between any pair of vertices in a half-θ6-graph whose length is at most 5/ √ 3 = 2.886... times the Euclidean distance between the pair of vertices.The half-θ6graph is identical to the Delaunay triangulation where the empty region is an equilateral triangle.Moreover, we show that no local routing scheme can achieve a better competitive spanning ratio thereby implying that our routing scheme is optimal.This is somewhat surprising because the spanning ratio of the half-θ6-graph is 2. Since every triangulation can be embedded in the plane as a half-θ6-graph using O(log n) bits per vertex coordinate via Schnyder's embedding scheme (SODA 1990), our result provides a competitive local routing scheme for every such embedded triangulation.

We propose designing data structures called succinct geometric indexes of negligible space (more precisely, o ( n ) bits) that support geometric queries in optimal time, by taking advantage of the n points in the dataset permuted and stored elsewhere as a sequence. Our first and main result is a succinct geometric index that can answer point location queries, a fundamental problem in computational geometry, on planar triangulations in O (lg n ) time. We also design three variants of this index. The first supports point location using lg n + 2√lg n + O (lg 1/4 n ) point-line comparisons. The second supports point location in o (lg n ) time when the coordinates are integers bounded by U . The last variant can answer point location queries in O ( H + 1) expected time, where H is the entropy of the query distribution. These results match the query efficiency of previous point location structures that occupy O ( n ) words or O(n lg n ) bits, while saving drastic amounts of space. We generalize our succinct geometric index to planar subdivisions, and design indexes for other types of queries. Finally, we apply our techniques to design the first implicit data structures that support point location in O (lg 2 n ) time.

We examine bounds on the locality of routing. A local routing algorithm makes a sequence of distributed forwarding decisions, each of which is made using only local information. Specifically, in addition to knowing the node for which a message is destined, an intermediate node might also know a) the subgraph corresponding to all network nodes within k hops of itself, for some value of k, b) the node from which the message originated, and c) which of its neighbours last forwarded the message. Our objective is to determine which of these parameters are necessary and/or sufficient to permit local routing as k varies on a network modelled by a connected undirected graph. In particular, we establish tight bounds on k for the feasibility of deterministic k-local routing for various combinations of these parameters, as well as corresponding bounds on dilation (the worst-case ratio of actual route length to shortest path length).

We propose a novel approach to automatically fill holes in triangulated models. Each hole is filled using a minimum energy surface that is obtained in three steps. First, we unfold the hole boundary onto a plane using energy minimization. Second, we triangulate the unfolded hole using a constrained Delaunay triangulation. Third, we embed the triangular mesh as a minimum energy surface in Ropf3. The running time of the method depends primarily on the size of the hole boundary and not on the size of the model, thereby making the method applicable to large models. Our experiments demonstrate the applicability of the algorithm to the problem of filling holes bounded by highly curved boundaries in large models.

We propose to design data structures called succinct geometric indexes of negligible space (more precisely, o(n) bits) that support geometric queries in optimal time, by taking advantage of the n points in the data set permuted and stored elsewhere as a sequence. Our first and main result is a succinct geometric index that can answer point location queries, a fundamental problem in computational geometry, on planar triangulations in O(lg n) time. We also design three variants of this index. The first supports point location using point-line comparisons. The second supports point location in o(lg n) time when the coordinates are integers bounded by U. The last variant can answer point location queries in O(H + 1) expected time, where H is the entropy of the query distribution. These results match the query efficiency of previous point location structures that occupy O(n) words or O(n lg n) bits, while saving drastic amounts of space. We generalize our succinct geometric index to planar subdivisions, and design indexes for other types of queries. Finally, we apply our techniques to design the first implicit data structures that support point location in O(lg2 n) time.

We address the following problem: Given a complete k-partite geometric graph K whose vertex set is a set of n points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, compute a spanner of K that has a “small” stretch factor and “few” edges. We present two algorithms for this problem. The first algorithm computes a $(5+\epsilon)$-spanner of K with $O(n)$ edges in $O(n\log n)$ time. The second algorithm computes a $(3+\epsilon)$-spanner of K with $O(n\log n)$ edges in $O(n \log n)$ time. The latter result is optimal: We show that for any $2\leq k\leq n-\Theta(\sqrt{n\log n})$, spanners with $O(n\log n)$ edges and stretch factor less than 3 do not exist for all complete k-partite geometric graphs.

Given a finite set of points S in Rd, consider visiting thepoints in S with a polygonal path that makes a minimum number ofturns, or equivalently, has the the minimum number of segments(links). We call this minimization problem the minimum linkspanning path problem. This natural problem has appeared severaltimes in the literature under different variants. The simplest oneis where the allowed paths are axis-aligned. Let L(S) be theminimum number of links of an axis-aligned path for S denote by Gdn the d-dimensional grid of size n. Kranakis, Krizanc andMeertens (Ars Combinatoria, vol. 38, pp. 177--192, 1994)showed that in 2-dimensions L(G2n)=2n-1 and in three dimensions 4/3 n2-O(n)< L(G3n) < 3/2 n2+O(n). Kranakiset al. conjectured that, for all d ≥ 3, L(Gdn)= d/d-1 nd-1 ± O(nd-2). We prove theconjecture for d=3 by showing that L(G3n) ≥ 3/2 n2 -O(n). For d=4, we prove that 4/3 n3 -O(n2) ≤ L(G4n) ≤ 4/3 n3 +O(n5/2).For general d, we give new estimates on L(Gdn), that bring usvery close to the conjectured value. The new lower bound of (1+ 1/d)nd-1-O(nd-2) improves previous result byCollins and Moret (Information Processing Letters, vol. 68,pp. 317--319, 1998), while the new upper bound of (1+ 1/d-1)nd-1+O(nd-3/2) differs from the conjecturedvalue only in the lower order terms. For arbitrary point sets, we give an exact bound on the minimumnumber of links needed in an axis-aligned path traversing any planar n-point set. We obtain similar tight estimates (within 1) in anynumber of dimensions d. For the general problem of traversing anarbitrary set of points in Rd with an axis-aligned spanning pathhaving a minimum number of links, we present a constant ratio(depending on the dimension d) approximation algorithm.

The spanning ratio of a graph defined on n points in the Euclidean plane is the maximum ratio over all pairs of data points (u,v) of the minimum graph distance between u and v divided by the Euclidean distance between u and v. A connected graph is said to be an S-spanner if the spanning ratio does not exceed S. For example, for any S there exists a point set whose minimum spanning tree isnot an S-spanner. At the other end of the spectrum, a Delaunay triangulation is guaranteed to be a 2.42-spanner [J. M. Keil and C. A. Gutwin, Discrete Comput. Geom., 7 (1992), pp. 13-28]. For proximity graphs between these two extremes, such as Gabriel graphs [K. R. Gabriel and R. R. Sokal, Systematic Zoology, 18 (1969), pp. 259-278], relative neighborhood graphs [G. T. Toussaint, Pattern Recognition, 12 (1980), pp. 261-268], and $\beta$-skeletons [D. G. Kirkpatrick and J. D. Radke, Comput. Geom., G. T. Toussaint, ed., Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1985, pp. 217-248] with $\beta$ in [0,2] some interesting questions arise. We show that the spanning ratio for Gabriel graphs (which are $\beta$-skeletons with $\beta$ = 1) is $\Theta ( \sqrt{n})$ in the worst case. For all $\beta$-skeletons with $\beta$ in [0,1], we prove that the spanning ratio is at most $O(n^\gamma)$, where $\gamma = (1-\log_2(1+\sqrt{1-\beta^2}))/2$. For all $\beta$-skeletons with $\beta$ in [1,2], we prove that there exist point sets whose spanning ratio is at least $\left( \frac{1}{2} - o(1) \right) \sqrt{n} $. For relative neighborhood graphs [G. T. Toussaint, Pattern Recognition, 12 (1980), pp. 261-268] (skeletons with $\beta$ = 2), we show that there exist point sets where the spanning ratio is $\Omega(n)$. For points drawn independently from the uniform distribution on the unit square, we show that the spanning ratio of the (random) Gabriel graph and all $\beta$-skeletons with $\beta$ in [1,2] tends to $\infty$ in probability as $\sqrt{\log n / \log \log n}$.

Let P be a simple polygon with m vertices, k of which are reflex, and which contains r red points and b blue points in its interior. Let n=m+r+b. A ham-sandwich geodesic is a shortest path in P between any two points on the boundary of P that simultaneously bisects the red points and the blue points. We present an O (n log k)-time algorithm for finding a ham-sandwich geodesic. We also show that this algorithm is optimal in thealgebraic computation tree model when parameterizing the running time with respect to n and k.

We consider online routing algorithms for routing between the vertices of embedded planar straight line graphs. Our results include (1) two deterministic memoryless routing algorithms, one that works for all Delaunay triangulations and the other that works for all regular triangulations; (2) a randomized memoryless algorithm that works for all triangulations; (3) an O(1) memory algorithm that works for all convex subdivisions; (4) an O(1) memory algorithm that approximates the shortest path in Delaunay triangulations; and (5) theoretical and experimental results on the competitiveness of these algorithms.

We study the problem of determining whether a manufactured disk of certain radius r is within tolerance. More precisely, we present algorithms that, given a set of n probe points on the surface of the manufactured object, compute the thinnest annulus whose outer (or inner, or median) radius is r and that contains all the probe points. Our algorithms run in O(nlogn) time.

In casting, liquid is poured into a cast that has a cavity with the shape of the object to be manufactured. The liquid then hardens, after which the cast is removed. We consider the case where the cast consists of two parts and address the following problems. (1) Given a cast for an object and a direction , can the cast be partitioned into two parts such that the parts can be removed in directions and - , respectively, without colliding with the object or the other cast part? (2) How can one find a direction such that the above cast partitioning can be done? We give necessary and sufficient conditions for both problems, as well as algorithms to decide them for polyhedral objects. We also give some evidence that the case where the cast parts need not be removed in opposite directions is considerably harder.

In the manufacturing industry, finding a suitable location for the pin gate (the point from which liquid is poured or injected into a mould) is a difficult problem when viewed from the fluid dynamics of the moulding process. However, experience has shown that a suitable pin gate location possesses several geometric characteristics: the distance from the pin gate to any point in the mould should be small, and the number of turns on the path from a point in the mould to the pin gate should be small. We address the problem of computing locations that possess these geometric characteristics. Given a mould M (modelled by an n-vertex simple polygon), we show how to compute the Euclidean centre of M, when it is constrained to lie in the interior of M or on the boundary of M, in O(n log n + k) time, where k is the number of intersections between M and the furthest-point Voronoi diagram of the vertices of M. We show how to compute the geodesic centre of M, when it is constrained to the boundary, in O(n log n) time, and the geodesic centre of M, when it is constrained to lie in a polygonal region, in O[n(n+k)] time. Finally, we show how to compute the link centre of M, when it is constrained to the boundary of M, in O(n log n) time.

No abstract available.

A polyhedron P is castable if its boundary can be partitioned by a plane into two polyhedral terrains. Such polyhedra can be manufactured easily using two cast parts. Assuming that the cast parts are removed by a single translation each, it is shown that for a simple polyhedron with n vertices, castability can be decided in O(n2logn) time and linear space using a simple algorithm. Furthermore, a more complicated algorithm solves the problem in O(n3/2+ε) time and space, for any fixed ε>0. In the case where the cast parts are to be removed in opposite directions, a simple O(n2) time algorithm is presented. Finally, if the object is a convex polyhedron and the cast parts are to be removed in opposite directions, a simple O(nlog2n) algorithm is presented.